Doyle Collection Unveils Slick New Hotels With Uninspiring Names

It’s brave enough opening one new hotel in these tough times, but a whole chain of ‘em? Now that’s ballsy. So we are sending lots of luck to the Doyle Collection, on its way to rolling out 11 hotels in the UK, Ireland and the US right now.

When we say rolling out, we don’t mean brand new – and bear with us on the explanation. Most of the hotels used to come under the Jurys brand, which was taken into private ownership two years ago, with the Jurys Inn properties being taken on by another company. The Doyle family, who owned the Jurys brand, held on to the posher hotels to revamp (to the tune of €200m) and rebrand them.

Over in the UK, we’ve already seen The Marylebone Hotel in Marylebone, London, which opened in January, swiftly followed by The Bristol in, erm, Bristol. They both look pretty swish, but the one we’re really looking forward to is The Kensington (we’ll let you take a guess where that one is).

Why so? Because unlike the Marylebone, they closed this one down for nine months, threw £20m at the building and, according to the hotel, “ripped it to shreds”.

The hotel is on the corner of Queen’s Gate and Old Brompton Road – a highly posh area – and is made up of four Victorian townhouses spliced together. The renovation has recovered the original ceiling heights (we’re hoping that means lofty) and they've brought in Murano glass chandeliers, herringbone oak parquet, and silk damask curtains.

As for the rooms, each will be individually styled with things like textured wallpaper, TVs in the bathrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides for the corner rooms (not sure how that works, but we can’t wait to see). Rates start from £110.

So good luck to the Doyles and their collection; one word of friendly advice, though – your rooms look pretty fly, but the sleeping lady and alarm clock on your homepage don’t. And in the future, a little more imagination in the hotel naming procedure wouldn’t hurt.